A Traitor's Penance
by ME'N7'Fan
Summary: Once there was an Angel, dark and foul of purpose born from shattered beliefs twisted from their pure intention by the lies of their Primarch. Now a borderline Radical Inquisitor belonging to the Ordo Malleus is armed not only with his retinue, but also a weapon far more dangerous than any blade, handgun, or even the Grey Knight Justicar. Rated M on the safe side.


A Fallen Angel

Disclaimer, I do not own Games Workshop, Warhammer 40000, or licenses to any of its related products such as Rogue Trader which has some regions mentioned in this story such as Winterscale's Realm and the station of Port Wander for a simple but effective idea as to context. (...But I do have a modest collection of WH40k miniatures started.)

Also, here's a big shout out to Matt, he's been helping out with fleshing out the plot, setting, a certain post-human, and a non-canon character such as... oh wait, I don't want to spoil that... carry on...

* * *

Great towering spires of rockrete formed or carved to shape by hundreds of millions of hands over the course of centuries if not millennia since the planet's colonization, that was just one of many parts of the lasting legacy the industrial hive city of Aestaban's Reach. Aestaban's Reach was the first colony made by an old and illustrious explorator and a small group of settlers moved from a Forge World to set up a forward base to establish a foothold for the Imperial Navy in the darker reaches of Winterscale's Realm. It was a slow and painful process that resulted in two failed attempts to tame the planet, but the third resulted in the marvelously robust fortress city of Aestaban's Reach and its grand orbital shipyards set in the planet's equatorial ring of mineral rich asteroids. The world itself was oh so creatively named as Aestaban after the explorator that found it, and after a century of faithfully and dutifully serving as a supply point for the Imperial Navy it then began to pursue more civilian arts of economic and industrial growth.

The mining of Promethium and the discovery of a vast wealth of other valuable ores that could finance an entire subsector for centuries, even after having the most exploitive and expensive mining methods to bear for the same amount of time, drew in the Rogue Trader dynasties on and off ever since the world ceased simply being a resupply point for the Imperium's grand naval forces. Ownership of the world itself was constantly in debate as the rights to precious minerals such as raw adamantium, and mundane materials such as silver or gold were the reason it changed hands frequently from one Rogue Trader dynasty to another as they appeared to claim the colony before dwindling, or fading into memory outright under a variety of circumstances. Eventually however an uneasy alliance of Rogue Trader dynasties arose at some point in the latter Fortieth Millennium resulting in a long and illustrious period that the colony flourished before becoming a true Hive World with a mined out asteroid belt that is little more than unusable rubble, and a pair of beautiful moons of near perfect conditions for colonization, both of which the size of Holy Terra's moon Luna. A pair of moons that were quickly turned into thriving Agricultural Worlds with populations just barely large enough to maintain massive farming communities, but still large enough to warrant a decent investment in constructing powerful fortresses to serve as centers of government and protection from any small-scale invasion that could occur.

Then there was the rest of the system, a brilliant Yellow star like Holy Terra's own, and a myriad of other planets including no less than two gas giants of immense size that with the proper industrial base could be utilized to create fuel for plasma reactors around the Imperium for at least a century of heavy exploitation by countless fuel barons. Asteroids were found in three belts separating the planets from the sun and were more or less depleted within a decade of being surveyed. The outer planets were unique in that they were in an orbit that kept them from being overshadowed by their larger and more gaseous neighbors except for two times in the year for an entire day with the only exceptions being the Western hemisphere of the outermost being a desert world rich in basic industrial metals and Promethium, and then the next closest in being the ninth planet in the system and it was mostly covered by a dense jungle filled to the brim with predatory wildlife that would go berserk during the two month long period of darkness the world's slow orbit put it behind its two larger neighbors except for a small sliver of the equator a few dozen kilometers wide that never varied more than a kilometer after taking into account the various weather phenomenon such as massive windstorms that could tear apart even the sturdiest of Imperial Guard bunker designs..

The system itself was unnamed, but all knew where it was and what it was. There were always Imperial ships patrolling the area, always mercantile shipping leaving or arriving to perform trade deals, and always a steady stream of transports shipping off a healthy tithe of two hundred thousand souls to fight in the Imperial Guard's various warfronts at the barest minimum every week.

Of course... the system was also home to a small order militant of the Sacred Rose, a convent of the Adepta Sororitas called Aestaban's Reach home and by a lesser extent it also considered the capital of the world to be holy ground extolling the city's founder Aestaban Valenthrop as a minor saint and elevating the early colonists to near martyr status with a Festival of the First. The Festival is always held on the first day of the year according to the standard Imperial calendar used to plan planetary tithes. It was a sort of praise to the souls lost in the founding of the first two initial colonies and those that succeeded in establishing Aestaban's Reach.

It was on this 'holy day' that Aestaban's Reach fell into chaos as the Hive World was beset by internal conflict created by both a cult worshipping excess and lust, and an attack by monsters wearing the flesh of man clad in the powered war plate of Traitor Astartes painted as black as their souls. It was on that day that a cult of Slaanesh and a small force of the Black Legion managed to plunge a small portion of the system into war as Ork pirates raided the outer worlds. The nearest forces from any of the Adeptus Astartes wouldn't be there for months, and the Imperial Guard regiments in the system were divided in two by the same internal strife that gripped the system. The only saving grace was that a single astropathic choir managed to get a call for aid out into the wider Imperium, of course the Imperial Navy would heed the call for aid, but any Rogue Trader with a sizable fleet with a taste for dangerous ventures would heed the call to protect their interests as well out of greed and necessity.

Then there was a small flotilla of a mere thirty ships of varying size, each carrying the feared 'I' rosette of the Inquisition, however the mind at the heart of this small fleet was a bitter man named Hansel Eichenwald- Heumann, a man born of Krieg with the curse of being a psyker. There was more to him than that however, he was also a member of the Ordo Malleus and a Radical Inquisitor that stayed true to the metaphorical 'book', but his choices in allies were much to be desired by his colleagues, even if none dared raise a concern about the issue due to his effectiveness. That and none dared to challenge the nightmare he had chained to his will by offer of redemption.

The nightmare in question was eight and a half feet tall in full armor, carried himself with the air of an old man trapped in a youthful looking body of forty, assuming an eight and a half foot tall post-human could look as such with scars from the rending claw of a Genestealer covering the left side of his face and extending into his hairline which currently consisted of short salt and pepper stubble. Dark brown eyes with a sharp intellect that pierced the soul while admonishing worshippers of any religion, and the war plate of an Astartes, painted black and bearing none of the old iconography imposed on its existence during the 'man's' tenure in the now turned traitor Lunar Wolves as a mark of penance, but the eye emblems that graced the chest and pauldrons remained but were embraced by silver Imperial Aquilas as a gem nestled between their twin necks. The former traitor was known as Caldonus and he claimed to be a mere soldier from the time of the Horus Heresy, but he had to be lying as the only Caldonus recorded in the official, and sealed, annals of the Inquisition in relation to the Lunar Wolves later known as the Sons of Horus, was that of a veteran Sergeant within the ranks of Horus' elite guard. Either way Caldonus was an asset to the Imperium if he was truly wishing for penance. Then there were the whispers that seemed to follow him wherever he went, all were of a single female voice just barely audible and never understandable, even to a psyker behind protective wards, and even then his presence was enough to silence the Warp sorceries of an entire cult on one occasion forcing the daemons spawned by their dark rituals to flicker in and out of the Materium before finally disappearing, never to return.

Hansel however was certain of Caldonus' apparent loyalty to him, and by extension the Imperium... but Caldonus always insisted he was loyal to Man and not the Imperium as it had died a long time ago with his primordial father, or at least who he considered his true father. The only thing that was odd about that statement as Hansel learned, was that Caldonus saw Horus as a liar, a traitor most foul, and false father, while the Emperor remained dear to him despite his having been turned against his liege by his charismatic Primarch.

* * *

Hansel paced in the area behind the command pulpit of his flagship, a modified frigate that was closely related to the _Firestorm_ class, but its age was clear with the abundance of hololithic emitters dotting the bridge, the low crew requirements, the overly efficient Warp Engines, the ancient plasma reactors that seemed to never fail without enemy action, and void shields that he had personally seen take a full broadside from a Tau cruiser. Indeed his suspicions always held firm whenever the Technomagus in his retinue would tell him of the ancient god machine that spoke in long droning whispers of advice warning of impending systems failure, or even the slightest disturbance in the Warp indicative of an incoming Real-space transition from the Immaterium. This ship, an old relic called _Spirit of Endeavor_ once belonged to a Rogue Trader that had wrested it from the clutches of a long deceased Void Kraken, and then relinquished it to the Inquisitor after his own vessel was destroyed defending one of his more important mining colonies. The act itself was unintentional, but necessary thus leading the Rogue Trader to eagerly offer the ship in a manner so that the Krieger didn't have a choice in the matter but to accept his gratitude as he no longer had a ship, but he had a crew.

These moments of thought and remembrance were what brought him comfort in the midst of turbulent times and they kept him centered, increasingly focused even, but there were times he found himself looking at a jewel of a world, usually some green covered gem of a habitable world, and dreamed of a new Krieg, a place where he and indeed the rest of the people of Krieg would be given a new home as a reward for their unending sacrifice and mastery of war by the Emperor. He knew however that so long as his duty required, he would rather die than allow himself that selfish peace to wallow in so long as the enemies of Man in their many forms still drew breath.

However, as of right now he had bigger things to worry about, he had ordered his retinue assembled over an hour ago after the Astropathic Choirs in the fleet picked up a call for aid from Aestaban's Reach, and half of the eight souls he commanded in his personal retinue were present, Sister Katherine, Caldonus, Uriah, and Victoria had yet to arrive in his personal audience hall, Caldonus he could allow to miss the briefing as the Grey Knight Justicar Uriah would not allow the former traitor out of his sight and would undoubtedly push them toward the objective regardless of the briefing's contents, he just hoped Caldonus wouldn't do what he did to the last Grey Knight that started preaching about the Emperor's light in the middle of a battlefield. Then again, he himself had shot a member of his old retinue for doing so in the midst of a situation that could have been resolved quickly and quietly if they had kept their mouth shut instead of waking an entire hab block filled with Chaos worshipping heretics, a situation he was glad he gave Caldonus leave to use any weapon he deemed necessary compared to his usual decision to restrict the Penitent to a Bolter, sidearm and chainsword.

The hiss of the door opening with a grinding wheeze of his frigate's ancient machinery drew the Inquisitor's weathered and pale face toward the back of the bridge to see the robed form of Sister Katherine and her rich chestnut hair spilling from beneath her hood as she thumbed across the adamantium beads of her Rosarius with a pensive look as she eyed the three storm troopers already on the bridge, as well as the slim figure of Valerie as she clutched her staff head bowed and whispering about the black winged angel as she usually did in her bouts of incoherence, a deck of the Emperor's Tarot floating in the air before her as she sifted through the cards at random before pulling a card from the middle of the deck and gave a soft but musical girlish chuckle at odds with her twenty four Terran standard years of biological age. The other figure behind Sister Katherine was the hunched figure of Techno-magus Mikael as he moved through the doorway with the metallic hissing of servo motors emanating from beneath his rust red robe, ochre lights shifted beneath his hood with a mechanical whir of clicking lenses and other various optical devices before he wheezed out a raspy and mechanical sigh from his vox-caster.

"Our compatriots and I apologize for our late arrival Lord, but the Omnissiah's gifts required additonal supplication and appeasement to aid in our travel to the bridge."

Sister Katherine gave a sidelong glance toward Mikael and spoke coolly, "What he means, is that the machine spirits decided that the main lift to the bridge required better maintenance than what a mere adept could provide."

Mikael straightened and revealed that he could easily tower over all but an Astartes as the sound of metal on metal echoed forth from beneath his robe as he shifted slightly with a hint of pride, and a wide variety of mechadendrites fanned out from beneath several folds in his robe seemingly on their own and formed the skull and cog insignia of the Mechanicum around him while another mechadendrite ushered a servo-skull fashioned into a simulacrum of the same emblem forth from in the hall to the bridge. The servo-skull carried a Ceres pattern bolt pistol beneath it in two mockeries of the human hand and held it out toward the Inquisitor.

"Your weapon is now whole again Lord, and blessed once more in the name of the Omnissiah, of course Sister Katherine was kind enough to bless this weapon as well."

The Techno-magus nodded ever so slightly in the direction of Sister Katherine as the loud metallic thudding of ceramite and metal resounded through the corridor outside the bridge, the sight of a grey clad Astartes moving down the hallway would have been enough to stir even a normally stoic Sister Katherine to the heights of zeal normally reserved for younger members of the Adepta Sororitas, as she was more than experienced enough to be the Mother Superior of a Convent garrison, but the sight was marred in her eyes by the second set of heavy footfalls as a bitter irony stirred in her thoughts. The irony however was a sour truth from what she had seen in the few operations the Grey Knight had participated in with the Inquisitor, and that was that the figure behind him could be trusted by her far more than he could.

The sight of a Grey Knight moving down the hall in full Aegis armor brought forth from the vaults of Titan would have been a sight to behold, but the very air seemed to darken and the light around him clung to his armor in desperation as a second figure in baroque powered war plate moved at a slower plodding pace its armor similar to a suit of Mark VII Aquila Pattern armor, but superficial similarities were the only thing in keeping with what the black painted armor bore. Imperial iconography such as purity seals were not present, the Imperial Aquila adorning each of his shoulders and breastplate had a serpentine eye nestled between their twin necks and they seemed to roam around the room with disinterest, presumably from a trick of the light, the helmet was an Errant Pattern helm instead of its Aquila cousin, a large armored collar blocked the neck from view, the pauldrons were thicker as the Imperial Aquila on each pauldron were placed upon an additional layer of adamantium plate wrapped around the rounded surfaces and held in place with a combination of welded metal and sharpened metal studs fashioned into short but cruel spikes, the decorations on the armor were fantastic by the normal standards of the mere Battle Brother but they were the plain silvery grey of alloyed Ceramite instead of gold or other form of precious metal embellishment, one of Caldonus' countless chainswords rested the back of his suit's powerplant with the use of a mag-clamp, a Mercury Pattern bolt pistol hung in a rough holster of wrought iron chain and Grox hide, and a Godwyn Pattern bolter idly set across one arm of the black clad Astartes. His helmet's two yellow lenses bore into the side of the Grey Knight in cold contempt.

The Grey Knight spoke, "Justicar Uriah reporting Lord Inquisitor, and I have ensured the arrival of the Traitor as well."

The black clad Astartes behind him snorted in annoyance, "Of course you did... but tell me, did you really have to interrupt my personal time for a mere briefing? I am an Astartes, my role is to kill the enemy, not be bored to death by unnecessary facts I cannot gather for myself."

"Of course I interrupted it. Idleness is the first step to Heresy."

* * *

Caldonus let a low rumbling laugh echo from his armor's Vox-grille and spoke in a low growl at odds with his apparent amusement, "Oh Brother hailing from Titan, do you not know exactly what my origins are?"

"No, nor do I care Traitor."

Sister Katherine realized what was going on as it had happened between Caldonus and the previous Grey Knight in their number, she had seen the Penitent truly angry only once before and he acted much as he did now. He would put on a false air of amusement, and then... well, bad things would follow in short order. She was however glad to see the Lord Inquisitor make a step forward as he recognized the signs too.

The Inquisitor started forward and spoke in a level but obviously wary tone, "Sergeant, plea-"

His attempt to try preventing anything further from being said or done, sadly however the Justicar spoke again due to his choosing to follow up in a not so typical Astartes behavior in keeping with the saying, "A task unfinished is a prayer unanswered."

"You know Traitor, you should have been left dead by your traitorous Primarch's side, assuming you know what honor is or even cared about the insult your very existence leaves on His holy work. If you were not a part of this Inquisitor's retinue I would-"

The Justicar never had the chance to finish as a black blur of movement brought him face to face with the former member of the Black Legion a mere few inches from each other's helmets.

The anger in Caldonus' stance was palpable as it radiated off of him in waves as he spoke through his vox-grille.

"I would be very careful with whatever you say next faith monger, for if given the chance I will show you just how little your belief will do for you in war."

Looking to the Inquisitor he spoke once again but he was far calmer than when he spoke to the Grey Knight.

"Inquisitor, what are my restrictions for our next... assignment?"

Inquisitor Hansel was surprised to say the least, but he understood Caldonus well enough to scrap any future plans to deploy the Justicar and Caldonus in the same area of operations now that this incident occurred. Then of course there was the current issue regarding the emergency call for aid his fleet was already en route to assist with.

"You are allowed any weapon or item required to combat any threat posed by the Enemy. Leave none of the Heretics alive."

Caldonus gave a nod toward the Inquisitor before pushing the Justicar backward with enough force to send him stumbling across the bridge before making a bone chilling declaration, the same one the Inquisitor had heard before the assignment that earned the scar Caldonus received from a Genestealer.

"Then consider the enemies of Man as good as dead, for you shall not have to sign the death warrant of that world."

Caldonus then looked to Sister Katherine, and in response she felt every part of her body and soul under his glare.

"Sister, I would request your assistance in preparing my wargear."

Letting out a long drawn out sigh, Sister Katherine gave a nod and watched as Caldonus stated his intention to leave with an unspoken desire to do so before turning back to the entrance to the bridge. She knew what might happen during the time she would use to assist him with preparing his wargear. Although she wasn't wary of debate, as she began to doubt the Ecclesiarchy years ago, but fully embraced the Imperial Truth as the only true faith long before her doubts began to surface.

"Lord Inquisitor, I shall assist Caldonus in his preparations as quickly as I am able once the briefing is over."


End file.
